Highway 5

Day 6: As we were leaving the guy’s apartment the previous night, David suggested that we go tubing down the Savannah River today. We were all for it, but then the plans changed and Josh decided that we should go swimming in the Savannah River at night. Yeah, that sounds like a wonderful idea, “Girl goes on trip to Augusta and gets eaten alive by an alligator.” I’m usually not a chicken when it comes to doing daring things, but I don’t like unknown water, especially at night. So, I wasn’t exactly thrilled about a river with the alligators, but I agreed to go. Since we didn’t have plans til that night, Kiersten and I made a Spaghetti dinner for the Scarborough’s. We made it early in the day and threw it in the crock pot. Anne took us to see the Widow’s Home, the place were Dr. Grants future clinic is going to be. We were just driving along and Anne was pointing out random houses and telling us facts about them. Then, we drove up to this big beautiful old brick mansion. I was like “Wow, what is that?’ She was like “the Widows Home.” It was love at first site. Ha! It was an old building that was used by the Civil War Widows. It was gorgeous. After we left I told Anne that I was sold on moving to Augusta when I graduate. So, we returned home and had family dinner. I have to say somewhere along this trip I started liking wine and babies. I always make fun of my roommates when they drink wine, but now for some reason, I don’t hate it. It must be the small bit of catholic in me. As for loving babies, that’s a miracle out of scripture. So Anne, Kiersten, and I laughed and talked about how this trip has just changed us so much. After dinner Josh came to the house so we could follow him to his friend Shane’s house. He was the one that has a house on the Savannah River. So we followed Josh to the house and the whole way Kiersten and I are telling ourselves that we can’t believe that we are about to swim in a river at night. Actually, that was more like Kiersten saying that because I said there is no way that I’m going to get in a river. I’ve taken one too many science classes to want to do that. We got to the house and Nathan and David were already there. Everyone gathered their swim stuff and we made our way down to the river. I’m thinking in my head this is cool, yet so unbelievably gross. We get to the dock and the fearless ones: Josh, Kiersten, and Nathan all jump holding hands into the river. Yeah, it was nice knowing them…ok actually they survived. So, that left David and me standing on the dock. I told David that I was not about to get in that water. David wasn’t in the water yet because he had a freak treadmill accident and injured his pinky toe. He was waiting for the Hydrogen Peroxide to soak in the wound before making the plunge. When his toe was finally all doctored up he said, “Come on Katie, let’s go.” I just look at him like he was crazy and the next thing I knew, he had the death grip on my hand and I’m screaming bloody murder as I hit the water. I felt like that feeling you had as a little kid when you are not wearing your water wings for the first time and all you want to do in hold on to your dad for dear life. Oh, the only problem here was that I’m a 22 year old woman with no one to latch onto but David who I had met 2 days earlier. Just the whole idea of being in that water freaked me out. I told David that I needed to get out. We swam over to the dock and we tried to pull ourselves up. I’m such a weakling with rolled up newspapers as arms and I couldn’t get out of the water. David managed to make it on the dock and he lifted me out of the water. So, we left the others floating in the river. David asked me if I wanted to get in the water again. Without hesitation, I said “No.” So he said, “Grab your towel and let’s sit and talk.” So, we talked about life and all its wonders as we looked up at God’s beautiful universe. After talking for awhile we both realized that we were getting eaten alive by mosquitoes, so we migrated inside. Not too long after that, the brave ones joined us in the house. After everyone changed out of their nasty smelling river clothes we decided to watch a movie. Of course, there were 5 of us and one too many movies to count, so picking out a movie was going to be a chore. After we stared at the movies for a minute we told David to just pick one. He chose, Once, which was wonderful because I love the music to it, but I had never watched the movie. So we watched Once, and the music was amazing of course. Kiersten got up to go to the bathroom and spotted a pack of raccoons. I don’t know if the proper term is pack, but I’m just going to go with it, outside eating the cat food. We all got up to see them and they ran off. After the excitement of the raccoons was over, we sat back down and finished the movie. Once the movie was over, it was time for us to head home. We said our good-byes, it was weird that we had only known Josh, David, and Nathan for the couple of days that we were there, but it felt like we had known them forever. They told us that they’ll come to Memphis in the fall. I’ll believe it when I see it. On our drive home there was an unusual air of silence that surrounded both of us. I suppose we were trying to replay the events of this vacation. The fact was that we weren’t even suppose to stay in Augusta passed Sunday because we were going to the beach. That this whole trip was a perfect example of how we aren’t in control of our lives. We had our whole trip planned with how many days we were to stay in every place to the places along the way to stop. Then all those plans went out the window all because of a missing wallet at the Texaco in Douglasville Georgia. I know that I’m probably about to be really cheesy with these last sentences so brace yourself. No matter how much you try to plan your life, it never ends up the way that you pictured it, but even better. So, yes I have to say that this trip to Augusta, Ga, of all places, has changed my life in some way. From the various roads that I’ve traveled so far in my life, I’ve decided that it takes leaving the place where you feel security to grow. Being uprooted and placed into foreign ground forces you to step out of the environment that you have grown accustomed to and rely solely on God. I feel that God likes to take us on little adventures sometimes, like this one, to draw us closer to him. The funny thing about this whole trip was that God could have made it easy for us and shown us the wallet. Instead He had bigger plans for us then we had for ourselves, so He let us sweat it out on side of Highway 5 in the middle of Douglasville Georgia it search for that stupid wallet.